Simeon Dunn - The Final Years

Part 4 of 4 parts.

I was ordained a Seventy by Rules S. Wells on april 25, 1909, and a few years later was set apart as one of the Council of the 92nd Quorum. On the 24th of May, 1942, I was ordained a High Priest and set apart as a member of the High Council of the San Luis Stake by richard R. Lyman, an Apostle. I served under to Stake Presidents, John B. reed and Howard Shawcroft. During the time I was in the Seventies Quorum, I served as a Stake Missionary for about three years.

In 1940, I quit farming and went into the gas business wholesale and retail. During World War II, my wife and ran the place. She took care of the station while I did the hauling and delivering. Neither of us missed a day on account of sickness, and we had wonderful health. On January 1, 1950, I sold the business to my son-in-law, Boyd W. Pagett. I was 72 years old. I stayed and helped him for about four years.

During all this time I had been working in the Church in different positions. After my release as a High Councilor I was set apart as President of the High Priest's Quorum, where I served for about four years. I also served in the Mutual Improvement Association as Superintendent of the Sunday School for a number of years. I have served as a Wart Teacher (and Home Teacher) since I was a young man.

Our daughter, Cora, died October 11, 1944, and her husband, James Edward Bingham, died July 11, 1946, leaving a family of six children whom we helped to raise.

This history would not be complete without a word about my wife. We were married 58 years th 20th of November, 1958. She is the mother of 13 children, 11 of them we raised to man and womanhood, two died in infancy and our daughter, Cora died at the age of 36. The rest of our children are alive today. She has been a wonderful wife and mother, has taught her children honesty, thrift, to be good membeers of the Church and of the community where they live. She is loved and respected by the people of the community where she lives and all who know her. Our son, Rex was stricken with polio in 1936, when he was nine years of age. My wife never ceased working with him and spent years taking him to different doctors and hospitals. He was left with one leg that has to have a brace and he walks on crutches. As of this date (1958), we have 102 in family, in-laws and all--13 children, 43 grandchildren, 24 geat grandchildren, 80 blood descendants.

(1993 -- This history is bing finished by Semeon and Anna's daughters, Frances Gillespie, Ruth Koch, Hazel Nite, Elma Pagett, Doris Mortensen, and Ina Olsen). Anna Buletta Jensen Died October 9, 1959, at her home in Manassa. She was 77 years old. After he death, their daughter, Doris Morensen and family lived in the family home. Simeon lived with them in the summers and with his daughters, Ethel Forsyth, Ina Olsen and Hazel Nite, who lived in the Los Angeles area, curing the winters where he worked in the Los Angeles LDS temple. After five years, his daughter, Frances, rented a Temple apartment and they lived there together and worked in the Temple during the winters and went back to Manassa during the summers. The last three years of Simeon's life, he stayed in Manassa. He stayed mentally and physically active and died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 95 years old. He died January 10, 1973.

Better people never lived than Simeon and Anna. They are dearly loved by all of their descendants.

Taken from, "A History of the Ancestors & Descendants of Simeon harmon Dunn and Anna Buletta Jensen", compiled by Vera Dunn Olivier, Published privately June, 1993, pp 25-26

Simeon and Annie start their family

Part 3 of 4 parts

I had now been away from home two years. I was offered a job teaching school at home, in Eastdale, Colorado, so I went home and commenced teaching for forty dollars a month in a little country school where I had all the grades by myself. In the fall of 1895, I was put in as Ward Choirmaster, a position my mother held before me. On November 21, 1899, I celebrated my 21st birthday teaching school with 30 or 40 students ranging from 6 to 16 years old.

In our town, water for domestic use was drawn with buckets out of wells 80 feet deep. We had no well on our lot, so my brother, Levi, and I decided to dig one. I had a horror working underground and had never been down one of those deep wells, but by starting at the top and going down a few feet each day, I learned to work underground. I also helped on the farm some and went to summer school in Manassa, which was taught by Clifford I Goff. I stayed at the home of Stake President Albert R. Smith. After this school closed, I, with another young teacher, Ashbel Haskell, attended a short teachers' course in Antonito, and after that two weeks went to Del Norte to a Teachers' Institute. By the time this was out, it was time to start teaching another term.

School started again (1900), the students who were sixteen last year were seventeen now and one of them especially was becoming quite noticeable to me. Before school was out in the spring, her mother said she didn't think it did much good for her daughter to go to school as she wasn't studying much as she was too interested in the teacher.

On November 20, 1900 this same young lady, Miss Anna Buletta Jensen, and I were were married by Joseph F. Smith, of the Council of the Twelve, in Manassa, at the home of her father's first wife. She was 18 and I was 23. I was teaching again at Eastdale for my third year. I traded a team of horses for a house and lot where we lived for 10 years. In the summer of 1901, A.C. Neilson and I took a contract stacking hay on a cattle ranch about 35 miles from home so we camped there while putting up hay.

On August 25, 1901, our first child, a girl, Frances Edna, was born and we thought she was the sweetest baby that ever lived. In the fall of 1901, Ammon Mortenson and I rented a herd of sheep from Bishop Christen Jensen, my father-in-law, and spend the next eight years, farming, building reservoirs, and working in the ward organizations.

On the 13 of May 1903, our second child, Ethel Leona, was born. On January 6, 1905, our third child and first son, Willard Oliver, was born. He lived a littler over a month and died February 18, 1905. We were broken-hearted. On October 5, 1905, my wife and I with our two little girls went to the Temple in Salt Lake City, where she received her endowments. I had already received mine, and we were sealed for time and all eternity and our three children were sealed to us. What joy and happiness this brings to us when we know that if we are faithful in keeping the covenants we have made with the Lord, we will be privileged to live as families forever in God's kingdom. On June 16, 1906, our fourth child, Ruth Carrie, was born.

The county in which we lived was an old Spanish grant, and the people who owned it sold it to another company who wanted to get more settlers on the land. As the community of Eastdale had the best water rights on the stream, they were anxious to get it and they put considerable pressure on us to sell. The people finally sold to them, some moving to Manassa, and some to Sanford.

On the 29th of July, 1908, our fifth child, Cora Emily, was born. We now had four little girls, the eldest not quite seven. (Cora was born in Eastdale.) During the summer and the following winter, I worked for the company which bought our land and water, on the reservoirs the Eastdale people had started. After working one day, I was put in as a foreman on the dam for which I received $3.00 a day and paid 75 cents of that for board. The common laborer received two dollars a day and paid 75 cents for board. I spent the winter working on the reservoirs and in the spring of 1909, moved to Manassa.

We lived on a ranch south of town where we stayed until the summer of 1910. During the summer we built a house and granary in Manassa. We made two rooms in the granary so we could live there while we finished the house. On the 1st of September, 1910, our sixth child, Edgar Harmon, was born in the granary. We finished the house before cold weather and moved into it where we lived for several years. I spent the next few years working in company with several of my brothers-in-law with sheep and cattle.

On September 12, 1912, Ina, our seventh child, was born. Our company dissolved partnership and Ammon E. Mortensen and I started working together. We farmed together until our boys were large enough to help run the farm. For the next thirty years, I ran the farm, milked cows, raised pigs, hauled milk to the creamery, and helped raise my family. During most of the time I had good health. During the terrible flue epidemic, after World War I, I had a bad sickness with flu, but finally got well. Many friends and relatives died with flu during this epidemic.

On February 24, 1915, our eigth child, Hazel was born. On March 7, 1917, our ninth child, Elma, came and on Feb 7, 1919, Doris was born. We now had eight girls and one boy living. On the 12th of April, 1921, Loyd Jensen was born and on the 13th of April, 1925, we had a son, Keith Melford, who was stillborn. Our last child, Rex Simeon, was born September 12, 1927. This is the total of our family, eight girls and five boys, eleven living. My mother, Eunice Emily Harmon Dun, died April 24, 1922, with cancer of the liver. She was 67 years old. My father, Simeon Adams Dunn, died February 13, 1935, at the age of 84.

During the winter of 1927-28, there was an epidemic of smallpox in Manassa. Many whole families were ill at the same time. The first bunch of vaccine that people were vaccinated with was not effective and by the time the second bunch was given out, most of the people had already contacted the disease. Our whole family came down with the disease, but all recovered.

Taken from Simeon Harmon Dunn's own history found in "A History of the Ancestors and Descendants of Simeon Harmon Dunn and Anna Buletta Jensen," Compiled by Vera Louise Olivier and published privately June, 1993, pp23 - 25

Simeon Harmon Dunn - His school days

Part 2 of 4 parts

During my boyhood in Eastdale, I worked on a farm, milked cows and did any other work to help. Times were hard, no money and we had to make our own amusements. At first we held dances in private homes. We were well blessed with musicians, there being five or six men in town who played the violin. My mother had a small organ that we carried from our home to the place where we held dances to accompany the violin and I usually played it. We had a good time.

Later, a log schoolhouse was built where he held all public gatherings. Quite often a dinner for everybody in town was held at this schoolhouse. Everybody was friendly and we had good times. During the summer of 1895, I worked in Sanford for Ira Whitney, helping make adobes and building. In the summer and fall of 1895, I drove the horses that run the thresher, six teams on a horsepower thresher.

I had been thinking of going to Utah to school as there were no high schools here, so one day a young man and woman came to the thresher to find someone to help take a team and wagon to Odgen, Utah. I quit my job and in company of Steve Spiker of Manassa, we started for Utah in October 1896. We were about three weeks on the road and landed in Huntington, Utah, the day of election when McKinley was elected President of the United States. My Grandmother and uncle lived there. My uncle was superintendent of the Co-op store. A telephone line had just beeen completed from Price, 25 miles north on the railroad and one phone in the store was all there was in town and men stayed in the store all night to get election news as it came over the wire. This was the first phone I ever saw or heard.

I was 19 that fall. I lived with my Grandmother, Eunice Chidester Harmon, through the winter and attended Huntington Seminary, a church school, where high school subjects as well as religion was taught. A. E. Wall was the teacher. I was ordained a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood by Bishop Peter Johnson and set apart as a counselor in the presidency of the quorum where I served that winter. An uncle, Oliver Harmon and family also lived in Huntington. The oldest boy, Oliver T., and I attended a music class where we studied vocal music under Professor Hardy. My mother was a good singer and I inherited some of her talent and was glad to have a chance to improve along that line.

Nothing of great importance went on except school work through the winter of 1897. The streets and roads were solid with snow so we had sleigh riding. When spring came and school was out, I went by train to Toquerville in Utah's Dixie, to work for Levi N. Harmon, another brother of my mother. I spent the summer on a small farm, irrigating orchards, alfalfa, and cutting and stacking the hay ten acres will produce. In this part of the country, the hay is cut four or five times a year. In the fall I helped pick peaches, grapes, and almonds, etc.

When school time came, I went to St. George, about 25 miles away, and spent the winter there in schoool with John T. Woodbury as teacher. I stayed at the home of another uncle, Melvin N. Harmon. He went with me and introduced me to the teacher and I was a homesick boy. As soon as opening exercises were over, a young man, Jospeh W. Webb, came and sat down by me and introduced himself and from then on we were together most of the time. A young lady, Della Rideing, also came and introduced herself. From then on, I made friends fast. I joined the baseball team (in Dixie they play all winter) and in many ways had good times besides attending to church duties as they were in the L.D.S church.

When school was out, I went back to Toquerville where my uncle Levi was getting ready to move to Castle Valley. Before leaving St. George, I was ordained an Elder by Edward H. Snow of the St. George Bishopric, and went through the Temple. My uncle and I went to Huntington by team and wagon, taking about a week to travel there. I again stayed with my grandmother. Shortly after arriving in Huntington, I took sick with some kind of fever and wasn't able to do any work for about a month. After getting well, I helped farmers put up hay and harvest grain.

During the summer, Professor Hardy organized a choir of 125 voices from several towns to attend and compete in a singing festival in Salt Lake City in October and I was chosen as one of the singers. The first part of September I went to Castle Gate and worked for the Rio Grand Railroad for a month and then went to Salt Lake to take part in the singing contest, 125 country people and we sure had a swell time. Of course we didn't win, but we had the time of our lives. Just singing in the Tabernacle was a thrill that I'll never forget.

Taken from Simeon Harmon Dunn's own history found in "A History of the Ancestors and Descendants of Simeon Harmon Dunn and Anna Buletta Jensen," Compiled by Vera Louise Olivier and published privately June, 1993, pp21 - 23